NSA bugged 38 European embassies

US National Security Agency is listening to phone and Internet activity of the European Union mission in New York and its embassy in Washington. One of the documents leaked by Edward Snowden lists 38 European embassies and missions, describing them as “targets”.

The equipment used to spy on European allies varies from bugs implanted into electronic communications gear to taps into cables for collecting transmissions with specialized antennae.

The listed targets in document include French, Italian, Greek, Japan, Mexico, South Korea, India and Turkey embassies and EU missions.

According to operation codename “Dropmire”, NSA was able to install a bug into commercially available encrypted fax machine at the EU embassy, DC.

According to German magazine Der Spiegel, some operations were targeting the EU's Justus Lipsius building in Brussels. In total NSA was monitoring conversations of around 500 million citizens of Germany and reading their online chats and emails, SMS messages and phone conversations.

Snowden “has told the people of the world and the United States that there is mass unlawful interception of their communications, far beyond anything that happened under Nixon,” Assange said in an interview by ABC at the embassy of Ecuador in London, where he has taken refuge from attempts to deport him to the United States.